NCS holds World's Fair

Students who attend Neosho Christian School participated in a unique event on Thursday, March 7, at the school to help raise funds for future field trips.

Todd G. Higdon

Students who attend Neosho Christian School participated in a unique event on Thursday, March 7, at the school to help raise funds for future field trips.

The students participated in the school's first World's Fair.

"I kind of got the idea, looking through some activities over the summer of a way to get more of the student body involved and not so much of an assignment," said Dan Lazure, a teacher at the school. "But something that they will benefit from researching, sending emails and getting things back. They all chose a country – whether it was an individual or group – we have allowed some class time and their own initiative they have just taken off with it. I gave them the original parameters, nothing short of their imagination. (They contacted) banks to museums to colleges, tourism, on and on, the results have been great. All of them bringing food too, it has been very good."

The project began back in September, and it was mandatory for students in seventh through the 12th grade. Other students participated in the event as well.

As stated, the students contacted a country of their choice, asked for information, even how to prepare some of the food the country has and on Thursday, opened it up to the public to come in. Tickets were 25 cents each, which they could give to the student to taste some of their food. There were around 22 different countries represented including Greece, Germany, Switzerland and Canada, to name a few.

One of the students participating was Annie Lazure, who made food associated with Greece, including a famous pastry.

"I made the baklava (a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey)," she said. "I have tasted it before at the farmers market and I have made it four or five times before."

Asked what she thought of the project, she said, "It was a really fun event."

Emma Tribbey stood by her table, which featured Swiss cheese, crackers and a lot of Swiss chocolates.

"It was fun looking at the country and seeing everything," Tribbey said.

She has family members who live in Switzerland and contacted them for information. The smell of pizza was coming from the Italy booth, as Cloe Neece and Makenzie Lindsay were serving slices of pizza and cheesecake.

"Today (Thursday), we made the pizza and (Wednesday night), we made the cheesecake," said Neece. "We left it because it had to be in the fridge for a long time. We were looking at Italian recipes online and found cheesecake so we just used that."

There were a couple of different types of pizza the two students made.

"They are all called margarita pizza," Lindsay said. "We made meat lovers pizza it has sausage and pepperoni on it. We made regular cheese pizza and then we made Italian sausage pizza. Well, we used our bread machine to make the dough. The sauce we had to precook and then cool. It took a long time."

Lindsay said they learned a lot from contacting the country of Italy about this project.

"We learned that they had a different culture than we do actually," she said. "They have different weather, money. It is a pretty unique place."

Neece said she would like to go to Italy one of these days."It is really pretty," she added.

Alec Fehring picked Germany for his featured country.

"My ancestry goes back to Germany," he said.

Aside from a sampling of food, he had ink pens on the table, and numerous brochures about museums and other tourist attractions. He also displayed posters.

"I have 40 (posters displayed) and 30 more as well," he said. "So I have 70 posters."He said through his research and emails, he learned a lot.

"I have learned a lot about the culture there," Fehring said. "I love the arts and museums that they have. There are maybe around 120 museums in Berlin alone."

Dan Lazure was pleased with the turnout during the event.

"All of our functions have great turnouts," he said. "We have been taking some great field trips, going to Jefferson City, Kansas City. This is money that we will use for field trips to go to some places that cost a little more that we couldn't justify."